Combating Spam (part 2 of 6)

Harsh Reality

Before you enter the battle zone you have to acknowledge a fundamental truth and accept a harsh reality:

There is no 100% sure-fire way to blow spam out of the water!

You can launch as many torpedoes at it as you want, but somehow it will manage to crawl out of its charred cesspool and find its way back to you. This reminds me of a song and a cute animation of a very persistent cat. “… I thought he was a goner, but the cat came back... the very next day...”

Unfortunately there is nothing cute about e-mail SPAM. It is at best, irritating, and in my opinion, the bane of the internet.

Ultimately though, the more torpedoes you launch at spam the farther you will send it, consequently taking it longer for it to make its way back to your inbox. I make all this sound like a war of epic proportions, when it's more akin to a plague that you try to keep from entering your house. From a developer's standpoint, it’s almost like a game of chess, where you have to think a few steps ahead of your opponent. You have to think like a spammer and figure out ways to counteract any attempts to exploit the weaknesses of your contact forms.

The bottom line is, the more combinations of spam-eliminating strategies you utilize, the longer you will live a spam-free diet. You have to realize that programming automated spam isn't that difficult. In most cases spammers rely on ignorance and laziness of the common internet user. The same goes for developers. Ignorance is NOT bliss. To truly be spam-free you must employ a comprehensive two-pronged approach:

Client-side Validation and Server-side Validation.

Part 1